The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)(9)

I walked toward them slowly while Maddox peeled off to go conceal the hard drives with the stack of cartons that held our personal effects, recovered by the system during the reset. We had entered through an elevator hatch near enough to it that it only took her a few seconds to hide the hard drives among them, and I waited, trying not to look at my watch, then sped up when Maddox returned to my side.

Just then, the man leaned over and tapped on the screen of the terminal, saying something in a contemplative voice. To my surprise, Sadie Monroe looked up and beamed at him, pride lining the curves of her pretty face.

“Very good,” she said in a throaty purr that I could hear over our footsteps.

It was so jolting that I slowed to a stop, absolutely repulsed by the idea that Sadie was flirting with Quess. I cast a worried glance over at Maddox, and saw her head cocked and eyebrows raised, green eyes flashing first in shock and then intense displeasure, and I suddenly had a picture in my mind of a gun about to go off.

And why wouldn’t she be angry? Quess was her… boyfriend? I wasn’t sure, and I hadn’t asked. He had been there for Maddox during her emotional crisis and had managed to nurse her through it. Now they shared a room. That was all I knew, and all I needed to know. They were adults, and it was none of my business.

But it became my business if Maddox’s jealousy could potentially damage the final stages of our plan. We were almost there—almost finished. We just had to knock Sadie out again, put her net back in, give her one last dose of Spero, and then send her on her way, report in hand.

Then she’d go back to her home, find it completely disassembled, and tell the council, hopefully with no memory of the events that had, and were about to, transpire.

“Keep it together,” I told her in a low, urgent voice. Her eyes flicked over at me without her head moving, and she carefully began to pull the anger off her face, softening the hard lines of it until she didn’t look so… murderous.

Quess glanced over his shoulder at us, and I started moving forward again, keeping my face even and plain. He gave me a little nod and turned back to Sadie. “CEO Monroe?” he asked, his voice soft and almost hesitant, nothing like the confident man I knew. I smiled when I realized he was playing her hard, because sure enough, her head swiveled up to him, an eager smile curling on her lips.

“Yes?” she asked, leaning closer to him. I bit my lip as his hand dipped down to his belt and slowly eased his baton out, hiding my smile. “What is it, Sam?”

I heard Maddox snort slightly under her breath, but my moment of levity was gone, and I was once again hyperaware of the time. Sadie was really out of it; clearly the sedative had lowered her inhibitions, and she had zeroed in on Quess as her conquest. And that was great, but we didn’t have time for this. On the one hand, I was happy that he had gone along with it in order to better manipulate her. On the other…

Maddox growled under her breath, and I silently prayed to a higher power for her to get a grip.

“Oh, I was just wondering about this little line of code,” he replied with an innocent smile, and then stretched an arm around her to point at something on her side of the screen.

She giggled and turned her attention to it, and I crossed my arms, my impatience growing, even as Quess slowly withdrew to create distance between them so that he wasn’t shocked along with her. “Sam,” she said, her voice a shrill squeal that rivaled the loud slap she placed on his forearm a heartbeat later. “You already know what this is!” She chuckled throatily and flipped her hair over her shoulder, spearing him with a predatory look. “What are you playing at?” she purred.

“Ho-kay, that’s enough of that,” Maddox said, and the next thing I knew she was crossing the floor toward Sadie in long, determined strides, her baton sliding out of her loop. Sadie’s head wobbled around toward Maddox, her eyes narrowing in confusion. Quess had just enough time to step away before Maddox was pressing the end of her baton into Sadie’s shoulder.

Sadie seized up for several seconds, and then slumped over as soon as the charge was expended, slipping right into Quess’s waiting arms.

“I had it,” he said as he eased her down with a grunt. “What the hell, Doxy?”

“Sorry,” she said, but her tone was anything but contrite. “I just couldn’t stand any more of the Sadie and Sam kissing hour.”

Quess rolled his eyes and then looked over at me. “How’d it go?”

“We had problems,” I told him honestly as I approached and dropped to the ground to help them flip Sadie over. “I’ve got Jasper and Rose in some slaved hard drives, but Jasper is still attacking Rose, and it’s drawing a lot of power. We need to get them downloaded…” I trailed off to check my watch, and my mouth went dry. We only had six minutes left before the hard drives failed. “Immediately,” I bit out, my stomach churning. A minute to exchange nets, and then we’d only have five more to wake Sadie up and get her out. We were cutting it really close.

Maddox straddled Sadie’s back, her hands already filled with the kit she’d used to exchange my net for Sadie’s in the elevator. I pushed Sadie’s hair out of the way while Maddox passed the bloody net she’d taken out of my neck to Quess for him to sanitize, and then began to cut, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Okay,” Quess said with a grim nod. “I’ll get them uploaded immediately. Anything else?”